


take two

by inverse



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:05:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1581092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>touou loses to kaijou. kise talks to aomine. a compromise is reached.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take two

**Author's Note:**

> just a note that this is rather unpolished since i rush-wrote it for the deadline and i will be updating asap, but feel free to read on!

The buzzer went off.

Kise only barely managed to detach himself from the floor when Aomine caught sight of the scoreboard, although he already knew the score. Just before the referee blew his whistle, the score had been tied at 107 – 107. Kise’s dunk put Kaijou’s score up to 109, which meant that for the second time in his entire high school basketball career, Aomine had lost. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, hands on his hips, trying to get his breathing back to regular. He scanned the court. Sakurai was bent over, palms braced on his knees, and Wakamatsu was standing not too far away with the two other regulars, one hand slapped over his forehead, as if thinking very hard, trying to mentally trace the moment where it all went wrong.

Kaijou were already in celebration mode. This was their first trophy in years, so the remaining third-years on the team were obviously overjoyed, and Kise was right in the middle of that noisy, raucous pile of bodies huddling up against one another, getting all sorts of shoulder pats and slaps on the back that looked like they bordered on painful. He’d hidden his face with his hands but his ears were all red at the tips and Aomine guessed that he was probably crying. Some things just never changed.

There was supposed to be a ceremony for the guests-of-honour to hand out the medals, but Aomine didn’t stay for it. He wondered why he, up until a while ago, wanted to lose at basketball so bad. It wasn’t actually a very good feeling. By the time he got out of the showers, the rest of the team were already in the locker room cleaning up and getting ready for the debrief, but he grabbed his bag and tried to leave.

“Hey,” Wakamatsu asked. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home,” Aomine yawned, cruising past Sakurai, who looked like he was trying to shrink backwards into the wall. It was good that Harasawa and Momoi weren’t there – probably discussing something important – he wouldn’t have been able to leave if the coach insisted on him staying to listen to Wakamatsu’s blathering. “You can lecture me all you want at practice next time, just let me go now.”

He was walking out the front doors of the stadium when his cell phone buzzed. Expecting it to be an irritating, naggy, mother-like text message from Momoi, he took a look at it, already prepared to fire back with something rude. It wasn’t Momoi, however. It was Kise.

 _Aominecchi,_ it read. _Have you left?? I want to talk to you. Can you wait for me at the train station? I’ll come over really quick. Please!!!!_

About twenty-five minutes later ( _I’ll come over really quick_ , he said), Kise arrived at Korakuen Station, where Aomine was waiting, leaning against a pillar and lazily ogling the bosoms of the office ladies who passed by. His hair was a mess from running and Aomine could spy the ribbon of his medal sticking out from a gap in his bag.

 

*

 

“Why weren’t you at the closing ceremony?” Kise asked.

“Because I wanted to go home to sleep,” Aomine replied simply.

“But you’re here.”

“You were the one who asked me to wait for you,” Aomine snapped. Kise could be really long-winded and daft when he wanted to be. No wonder he got along so well with Momoi when they were still schoolmates.

They were at a café that sat on the ground floor of a shopping mall in Ikebukuro. Kise said it was okay for him not to be with his team because they were going to celebrate the win sometime else anyway – their coach was going to buy them dinner at some fancy restaurant. Aomine wanted to eat something more substantial because the sugary-looking food there – sandwiches, pastries, _pancakes_ – seemed like it could barely sustain a five-year-old for the entire afternoon, but Kise insisted. “I’ll pay for it, order all you like,” he told Aomine, leading the way, “I know a friend who works there, she’ll try to make sure we get a discount.” Said “friend” turned out to, predictably, one of those cute, chirpy, outgoing girls who seemed more like touch-and-go casual acquaintance material than an actual friend. Aomine wasn’t actually sure if Kise had any male friends outside of his basketball team. She served them some iced water and took their orders, then left them to themselves. Good work ethic, but it just meant that after she left following some friendly small talk, the table went quiet, and both of them were left staring at each other in awkward silence.

“Well,” Aomine said, taking the initiative, since Kise kept staring distractedly out the glass panelling and at the passersby on the pavement. “Cough it up.”

“Oh,” he began, turning back to look at Aomine. “I thought I had a lot to say when I sent you that message. I had it all in my head. For some reason, none of it’s coming to me now.”

“You know what, Kise? If you’re gonna waste my time then don’t bother –”

“No, wait,” Kise protested, eyes flying wide open as Aomine started slinging his bag over his shoulders. He reached out and closed his hand around Aomine’s wrist. “Fine, sit down, I’ll talk.”

Kise’s friend chose this very moment to serve him his iced caramel macchiato. Gingerly he let go of Aomine’s hand, but she said nothing at all, pretending not to notice the warped atmosphere that sat over their table, choosing instead to smile at them with her pearly-whites and tell them that they could ask for assistance any time if they needed it. Kise pulled the glass towards himself, stirring and eyeing it shiftily until she was out of earshot.

“I just – noticed that we haven’t really talked to each other like this in a long while. Ever since last year, actually. I can’t believe it took me one whole year to even think of approaching you about it. It just occurred to me when we didn’t talk much or even really say hi to each other on the court just now that it’s gone on for a bit too long, so when I thought about it harder I realised that everything started when we played at the Interhigh last year, right?” He took a deep breath and heaved a huge sigh, then continued, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe I took that a bit too seriously. I mean, I wanted to take you seriously when we were playing, but I didn’t think I’d feel so sore about it for so long afterwards. I just thought I’d take the initiative to apologise. Clean slate, okay? I mean, obviously it’s a lot easier for me to throw in the towel since all the bad feelings I’ve been having got cancelled out because we won the match just now, but I was going to say this to you anyway if I lost just now, I swear.”

It was Aomine’s turn to go staring out into the road now. He propped the side of his face up with one hand, drumming the surface of the lacquered wooden table with the other.

“Kise,” he began, “I really don’t like the fact that I lost to you.”

“What? You’re such a sore loser, Aominecchi. All’s fair in competition.”

If he wasn’t going to say it now, he would probably never get another chance to say it. Common sense be damned.

“So maybe I guess you should make up for it by going out with me.”

Kise was downing his drink when Aomine said it. He choked. “I’m sorry,” he said cautiously, after he’d stopped coughing, “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“Don’t make me repeat it,” Aomine mumbled into his hand, face going hot.

 

*

 

The realisation that he was a bit caught up came shortly after the Interhigh quarterfinal, back when they were still freshmen. He came off it feeling much shittier about it than he thought he would be, especially because he’d been expecting a good match. Somehow, sometime during the game, it got really personal. He couldn’t really figure out why until the memory of Kise’s disappointed-looking face flashed through his mind’s eye, and from then on he couldn’t really get that expression out of his head. Kise was one of the last few people he’d expect to look at him like that; a lot of what Aomine remembered of him was a surprisingly dogged persistence, given his generic pretty boy face, a fierce intensity on the courts, and off it, noisy, annoyingly sociable, and extremely good with people. Disdain hardly ever showed on his face, and if it ever did, it usually wasn’t directed at him. Then it occurred to him that that wasn’t really about basketball anymore; it wasn’t really about their skills or how far apart or how close they were when it came to their ability. It was about him and what Kise thought about him and obviously Kise didn’t think very highly of him any longer.

The realisation that he’d been caught up all along, however, came with some more reflection, and then after that he wished that he didn’t think about it. Even before the Interhigh, before he stopped going to practice, before coming up with different ways to make fun of Kise, who was hilariously easy to tease, before Kise tried to catch up to him, before all the one-on-ones, he’d already heard of Kise Ryouta, not the basketball player, but Kise Ryouta the model, from all the girls in his class who’d talk about him non-stop, who’d walk past the gym every afternoon, often enough for Aomine to memorise the look of his face and the sound of his name, even before he’d hit him with a ball by accident, not expecting that that’d be the beginning of something else altogether. When he punched out Haizaki that night at last year’s Winter Cup after Kise’s game with him, he almost successfully convinced himself that he only did that because Haizaki wasn’t listening to his warning at all. That much was true too, at least.

 

*

 

“Are you going out,” Momoi asked suspiciously. “I can’t remember the last time you woke up so early on a weekend.”

It was ten a.m. on a Sunday morning. Aomine was exiting the front door of his house and Momoi was in the front yard of her own, unfortunately tending to some plants. This was the last thing that Aomine had wanted to happen. He thought he didn’t see anybody when he looked out his window to double-check, but as it turned out, Momoi had just been squatting beneath a hedge and was out of sight. She leaned over the partition separating both their houses and stared at him, wide-eyed, as if she could see through him.

“Mind your own business, busybody. Go do your hair or something.”

“You’re wearing your limited edition Air Jordans,” she said, eyeing his feet. “That’s weird. I thought you said you were going to put them on a display shelf and never wear them ever.”

“So?”

“You’re trying to impress someone,” she continued. Aomine hated this. She was always spot-on about the things that didn’t concern her. “More specifically, you’re trying to impress someone who likes basketball shoes or thinks these shoes are cool. You’re going on a date!”

“Shut the fuck up, I’m not,” he snapped, aware that his face was turning warm.

“You can’t fool my intuition,” she said. “Who is it? Tagawa-san from the girls’ basketball team? Hey, don’t ignore me!”

Kise hadn’t said yes to him that day, but he didn’t say no, either. “Don’t make me repeat it,” Aomine had said, and then when there wasn’t a response – not even a “You’re joking, right” – he regretted it immediately. He hadn’t thought so far ahead, so he didn’t even consider the possibility of failure. He just wanted to say it. Well, now that it was out and Kise didn’t have anything to say to him, that was that.

“No,” he continued, avoiding Kise’s gaze, “forget I said anything. I should get going.” He picked up his bag again, but Kise stopped him.

“Why are you always so impatient,” Kise griped. “I haven’t said anything yet.” He waited until Aomine settled down, stabbed the bottom of his glass with the straw as if running his options through his head, then said, “But I always thought you liked girls. You were always talking about them and their boobs and everything. I didn’t expect you to be …”

He trailed off. Aomine frowned, then realised what he was trying to get at. “Wait, are you calling me a homo? Because I’m not.”

“But you just said you wanted to go out with me.”

Aomine kept his eyes focused on the cutlery in front of him. “Only you, I guess. For the time being.”

“Oh,” Kise remarked, colouring. “Well – I’m not sure I like the idea, but – I don’t hate it, I suppose.” He sipped from his coffee again and when the straw left his lips the chew marks on the end had rendered the edge all flat and tapered.

They agreed to meet at a train station downtown. Before he actually tapped into the entrance, Aomine had considered turning back. He’d buy something from the convenience store and tell Momoi, who would no doubt still be in her garden, that he just wanted to wear his Air Jordans around the neighbourhood and show them off, okay? But then he’d be a real fucking chicken, and he didn’t want to have to cement in Kise’s mind the impression that he’d been fooling around. They’d probably really never talk to each other again if that happened. He arrived at his destination a whole twenty minutes before eleven thirty, the agreed meeting time, and decided to loiter somewhere else until it was time for him to turn up like he was accidentally punctual, right on the dot. That was until he took a left turn into the station’s south exit, and Kise was already there, leaning against part of a lengthy steel handrail, looking like he took five whole minutes to pick out his outfit (a graphic tee, varsity jacket, plain jeans and sneakers) but still more put-together than most people could manage in their entire lives.

“Hey,” he said, waving. “You’re early! I’m surprised.”

 

*

 

Before they knew it, they’d went on three such outings. Miraculously, no one found out, although they did bump into Midorima once when he was spotted buying a life-sized cutout of a Gundam model in Akihabara, but he thought they were just shopping, which wasn’t actually far from the truth. Aomine didn’t think of them as dates because he still didn’t know what the two of them were. The atmosphere would sometimes border on flirtatious, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of Kise’s overly-friendly nature and the fact that he was given to being naturally engaging and charming. For all Aomine knew, Kise was treating everyone whom he felt was a friend like this. It wasn’t behaviour that he couldn’t see Kise applying to people like Kuroko or Kagami or Momoi, either. If he wanted to be positive about it, though, the one good thing was that they were quickly approaching something like the older dynamic they used to have, back when they were more familiar with each other. On the other hand, Kise would sometimes put a bit of distance back between them, giving him non-reactions or the cold shoulder when he least expected it. A mixed bag of mixed signals.

The only thing that remained constant in their relationship, ironically, was basketball, given that it’d caused the large rift between them in the first place. They never once went without ending a meetup with a game. Kise had improved so much since the year before, that much was obvious; he couldn’t have matched Aomine during that last Interhigh game without evolving in some way or another. The two-point difference came down to the team play, which Harasawa pointed out in a later team briefing that they had to shed from previous years and come up with something else. Wakamatsu had blamed it on Aomine’s lack of willingness to pass at crucial moments, but he didn’t see why he should have done so. Any match played by two teams with former Teikou players on opposing sides essentially turned into a showdown between the two of them.

But without four other players padding the back, the most Kise could do at the current time, even as his skills grew at an alarming rate, was to close the gap between Aomine and himself, but never overtake Aomine, not at least for some time. That much Aomine knew. Kise wasn’t the only one who was improving. They’d played between themselves repeatedly and the result was always the same.

“I don’t believe this,” Kise exclaimed huffily, watching Aomine hang onto the hoop for a few seconds after his dunk, then land on his feet easily. “I’ve bested you once, I’m sure I can do it again.”

“That was just a fluke. You’re still a hundred years too early, trying to beat me in a one-on-one.”

“It wasn’t,” Kise insisted. He motioned for Aomine to pass him the ball. “Again!”

“Sure,” Aomine said. He still wanted to savour the feeling of being chased for a while more. Kise had started to play basketball only a few years ago, but he had gotten so good in so short a span of time, so Aomine couldn’t let that gap get smaller and smaller, which was something that was already happening. It was one of the incentives for Aomine to keep taking playing basketball seriously these days. Once upon a time Kise had set his sights upon Aomine as a target, and then renounced that in a move that made Aomine feel like the balance of power had been disturbed. Now, he’d make Kise chase after him for his whole fucking life if he had to.

 

*

 

They had their first kiss at a street court, at two a.m. in the morning on a Friday night. Kise had gotten off practice late, but since neither of them had any classes on the next day, it was okay for them to hang out till the early hours of the morning. They had supper at a 24-hour fast food restaurant, and then decided to play some streetball.

“You sure you don’t wanna go elsewhere?” Aomine taunted. “I haven’t been doing anything for the whole day, unlike you. I’m going to kick your ass flat.”

“We’ll see about that,” Kise replied, sounding sure that he’d rise to the challenge.

He didn’t. He stopped Aomine from scoring thrice but not the other seven times. At least he managed to score one basket, which was Aomine being nice, but Kise didn’t have any of it.

“Water break,” he said, frowning, “I hate to get to the point where you have to give in to me. Don’t say you didn’t, I can tell. You’ve gone all soft.”

It was dark and there wasn’t anyone around at this godforsaken time of day. It was Kise who made the first move, which was unexpected, because he was the one of the two of them who didn’t want to commit to anything. He was so forward about it that it actually startled Aomine. Granted, he was the one spent the two whole minutes that they didn’t spend talking staring at the pale white stretch of Kise’s throat as he finished an entire bottle of water in one go. Kise must have noticed, or maybe he was putting on a show and waiting for Aomine to do something. “You know, for someone who asked me out in the first place, you haven’t really had anything to show for it since,” he said, putting down his empty bottle, which was what got Aomine suspicious. Then he moved in and planted his lips on Aomine’s.

Except.

“No, wait,” Aomine protested, pushing Kise away gently shortly after, not used to the feeling of warm, sticky saliva all over his mouth, plus he couldn’t really breathe, “wait, I don’t like this.”

Kise’s face fell. He looked a little upset. “Are you joking? Nobody I’ve dated has ever told me they didn’t like my technique.”

“Technique,” Aomine repeated numbly. His mouth was still stinging from the contact, not in an entirely bad way.

Kise gave him a dubious look. “You know, I’ve always assumed otherwise, since you had your fair share of admirers when we were in middle school, and I’m sure you still have a lot now, but. Is this your first time?” When Aomine didn’t say anything, he continued, “Aominecchi, are you a virgin?”

“Does it matter if I am? You mean you’ve done it before?”

“Twice,” Kise replied indifferently. “The first time it was with a girl from my year, at school. The second time, it was a costume assistant at a photoshoot. She was pretty and she wouldn’t want to lose her job by spreading it around, so I figured it would be okay if I slept with her. She was a few years older too, so I thought she’d be more mature about it.” This wasn’t unexpected, but still shocking to hear in person.

Aomine knew now, given the current circumstances that they were in, that both of them were thinking the same thing.

“So,” he said, “ever wondered how two guys might do it?”

Under the megawatt lamp that was perched a short distance away from them, Kise’s coyness was palpable. “What do you think?”

The answer was obvious. He’d seen it in a few pornos, but didn’t think that he was ready for it anytime soon. “I’m not putting my dick in there.”

“What makes you think that I was going to let you anyway,” Kise said drily. He looked unimpressed.

“Quick response. Does that mean you’ve considered it?” Aomine retorted.

“No,” Kise replied, “but I’ve considered something else, maybe. Since I’ve had girls do it to me and it felt good. Mind you, I’ve never actually tried it on anyone before.” He reached out for Aomine’s right hand, and Aomine watched as his thumb disappeared into Kise’s mouth, his lips still a little swollen from their not-kiss. The implication was obvious. Aomine was sure his heart skipped a beat as Kise maintained deliberate eye contact, tongue swiping over the tip of his thumb, then engulfed the whole of it in the hot, velvety softness of his mouth. Aomine was frozen; he couldn’t move or speak and his cock twitched involuntarily in his boxers as he imagined Kise’s mouth moving like that over it. When Kise finally let go out of his hand, giving it one final lick up the side, Aomine realised that his breathing was uneven, like he’d played a quarter or two of a good, hard game.

“You think it’ll be good?” Kise asked breathlessly, almost as if asking for approval, tongue flitting out to run over his bottom lip, and Aomine couldn’t find it in himself to answer.

 

*

 

Afterwards there was mostly a lot of practice. The awkwardness of their first few trips had worn off after Kise initiated what he did, replaced instead by a burning need to know exactly how far they could go with each other. They were still playing basketball, too, but that started to take a backseat to the bulk of stolen makeouts in places where people couldn’t see them – Aomine slowly picking up the craft of a good kiss – park benches shrouded by trees at night, alleyways between streets that they’d walked through where no one frequented, the like. Once they jerked each other off in the public restroom near a court after they played an especially intense game, taking just five minutes to bring each other to climax, come slick in the grooves of their fingers, Kise’s forehead resting against Aomine’s shoulder in a sweaty mess, the sound of his heartbeat so loud that Aomine thought that his own speeding pulse was racing doubly quick.

Kise’s whole family went to Saitama for a weekend to visit some relatives. He told them that he couldn’t go because he needed to catch up on his homework, but on Saturday afternoon he sucked Aomine off on his own bed, like he’d promised to do so weeks ago – he never went down to Aomine’s place because then Momoi would find out – Aomine’s hands twisting in his fine, silky hair, and it was way better than he could have imagined it, watching Kise run his tongue down his red, swollen cock, eyes lidded, pupils blown, imagining Kise in his place and some girl between his knees sucking Kise off instead, her mouth full of his precum like Kise’s was with his. And then after that, because Kise was still hard, he jerked Kise off, chest flush to Kise’s back, arm around Kise’s torso, asking, “What exactly were you thinking of when you were fucking those girls?” Kise replied, breath hitching in between the desperate sounds he was making as Aomine’s fingers moved slowly around his cock, “Mostly about them, but you’d like it if I said I was thinking of you, right?”

Later, after they’d both cleaned themselves up, lying, spent, on the same bed, Kise said, arms around a soft, downy pillow, “You know, when you said you wanted me to go out with you, I never asked why. I guess I didn’t really want to know. I’d spent the longest time thinking that I couldn’t possibly mean much to you and I’d finally gotten over it, but then you had to say that to me. I didn’t want for it to be over something really trivial.” He shifted, burying the side of his head further into the pillow. “Can we stay this way for a while more? We’re talking more again and we’re doing one-on-ones again and you’re getting laid, kind of. I like this. I don’t want to talk about the heavy stuff, at least not for some time.”

Silently Aomine agreed. What they had was okay, and Aomine didn’t want things to become as complicated as they were before. This was okay. This was good, for the time being.

 

*

 

The next time they met again, two weeks later, it was at a train station, like usual. Kise had gotten there earlier and he was already there, waiting, even though Aomine had arrived punctually.

“You’re late, Aominecchi,” he beamed, hands braced on the railings he was leaning against. “You’re not getting away without buying dinner this time.”

**Author's Note:**

> the original first draft of this was very saccharinely happy and quite sarcastic in tone, but the more i wrote the more it turned into this... thing..... in the end i think this is the kind of aokise dynamic i like -- a pining aomine and a kise who doesn't care, instead of the other way round.
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> happy 5/7!! n__n


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